Tag: Arizona

Well, we’re back in Mafrica after two amazing weeks with the family in Arizona. We celebrated our wedding with my half of the family, spent quality time with the siblings, hung with Grandma, reconnected with aunts, uncles, and one cousin, and bonded with Mom and Dad. We were also gifted with a financial advisor who shares my admiration for my man’s handsomeness. It was beyond good. All of it.

A couple of salient, summary nuggets-

1. Everyone adores my man. Rightly so. He adores them too. He is officially one of the clan 😉

2. “Bake it until it looks pretty” was adopted by the women in my family. I felt proud. It seems to work very well on things like sweet potato wedges and cookies. Go Team Slacker 🙂

3. My Grandma named my first textile/clothing business. “Woven Patches.” The business doesn’t exist yet, and probably never will. The name is mine, though, because Grandma gave it to me. Don’t even try to steal it. 🙂

4. Grandma is an eccentric cook and an adorable human. Being around her is good for the soul.

5. I have a truly great family. We’ve all reached that magic age where sibling/parental strife is no longer poignant, and where we can just love each other, hang out, and be, in a very, very good way. They enrich my life in a way that goes beyond description.

7. Our financial advisor not only (consistently) kicks the S&P’s butt (Standard and Poor index) every year; he is an adorable, huggable man.

8. Our dog has a pattern. Everytime we leave the country, despite having great, caring guardians in our absence, he manages to be stricken with one plague or another. When we were in Sao Tome, he ended up with Parvo and a tick-borne illness that required a week of IV fluids, lots of drugs, and constant vet supervision. This time, he had a nasty dermatitis around his neck and head that got infected. He needed antibiotics and some injections and some patchy head-shaving, and now he is healing with the help of hydrocortisone and antibiotic ointment, but he looks like an overused and abused research chimp. I managed not to cry when I first saw him, but barely.

At any rate, I’m back and I’m rambling. As always, I love reading comments, so feel free to put your two cents in. If you are even looking at this blog, it’s because I asked you to, so your ideas are valuable to me 🙂

(My beautiful friend in Canberra– I am jealous of your iPad…BUT I’ll get one next year, post-tweaking. I’m happy that you have one… It makes me feel like I’m somehow connected to the iPad in an appropriate way 🙂 )

My man is freezing his tintins off in the field. My dog is dreaming in his bed. My parents are enjoying the afternoon in Arizona. My girls in Timor are already sweating on their way to work, a thin layer of dust settling into their pores.

It’s raining in Mafrica.

I don’t feel like studying Portuguese right now. My eyes are too strained for painting. Packing for Friday morning’s flight to the US is out of the question, because I don’t want to.

Ah. Of course. I’ll start a blog.

I won’t start with the suggested (thanks, Wifey, but I’m uninspired) anthropological commentary of variations among social groups regarding folk healing and food knowledge in contemporary Portuguese society.

[If you are bored, I suggest checking out http://anchorednomad.blogspot.com/. See especially her post “Ice Water Kills”. Incidentally, among “my” people, ice water just slows digestion, although I frequently make waves by tempting illness by walking barefoot on tile. It’s a dangerous world 😉 Of course, every culture has these things… but that is precisely what I’m not getting into right now.]

What I will commit to before I take my contacts out and find something brainless and happy to watch on sidereel, is a quick list of other blogs… guaranteed time-suck marvels. You’ll enjoy them. (My impulse to refer people to other authors is a remnant, perhaps, from my years in academia. Or not.)